Entertainment

Trying To Keep The Information Train In The Station Doesn’t Work

While those of us in social media might like to believe that information is open, transparent, and free, the fact is that for the larger Web outside of this niche that this isn’t necessarily the case. This has been made more than apparent with the current legal action against TheFunded.com by EDF Ventures as they sue for the identity of one of the site members. Another example came this past weekend, when three MIT students were gagged from giving a presentation about the security weakness they found in the fare cards used by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

While the incident with TheFunded.com may end up being a replay of the recent lawsuit against Torrent Bay, the court order to stop the students from giving their presentation at this past weekend’s DefCon 16 get together in Las Vegas is a different matter. As Declan McCullagh reported on the Security blog at c|net:

U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock on Saturday ordered the students not to provide "program, information, software code, or command that would assist another in any material way to circumvent or otherwise attack the security of the Fare Media System." Woodlock granted the MBTA's request after a hastily convened hearing in Massachusetts that took place at 8 a.m. PDT on Saturday.

The MBTA, which has not been saying very much publicly on the matter, did suggest in their court filing on the matter that this was a matter of public safety

The MBTA, which is a state government agency, alleges in its lawsuit that "disclosure of this information will significantly compromise the CharlieCard and CharlieTicket systems" and "constitutes a threat to public health or safety."

They were also more than up to the task to threaten the students with an FBI investigation as part of their tactics to muzzle the three:

But then the conversations took a hostile turn when MBTA mentioned an FBI criminal investigation of the MIT students. In the "initial contact, they said the FBI was investigating and that was not—we didn't find that to be a very pleasing way to start a nice dialogue with them. And we got a little concerned about what was happening," said Anderson, one of the students

It would seem that while the MBTA managed to convince the original judge who issued the restraining order that this was all about public safety I think it is far more about them protecting their revenue stream instead. This has nothing at all to do with public safety and this fact hasn’t escaped the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) who have supplied the MIT students with legal assistance to fight this gag order. For them and security researchers; who are watching this case closely, this is more about the First Amendment rights to publish freely.

In response the MBTA has filed a motion to amend to the order to only cover non-public information, which is almost laughable considering that the CD handed out to attendees of the DefCon convention contained all the information that would have been a part of the presentation. Along with that, in their filing for the gag order the MBTA included some of the very information that the students said they would have withheld from their presentation

But the students have maintained that they planned to withhold key information from their talk that would have allowed someone to replicate their tests in a manner that could be used to defraud the transit system. (Some of that key information, however, has since become public because the MBTA included it in documents that it submitted to the court.)

So, while for all intents and purposes the information that the MBTA wanted to keep out of the hands of the people is already out there for whoever wants it, they will be going back into court the have the gag order extended. In response the EFF has gotten eleven computer scientists and researchers to draft a letter in support of the students to be presented to the court

The letter supporting the students is signed by Dave Farber, who holds the title of distinguished career professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and is purveyor of the popular Interesting People mail list as well as a trustee of the EFF; and computer scientists Steve Bellovin from Columbia University; David Wagner from UC Berkeley; Dan Wallach from Rice University; and Matt Blaze from the University of Pennsylvania. Wired.com columnist Bruce Schneier is also a signatory to the letter.

I could almost see this action by the MBTA to seek the court order if this was truly a case of protecting the public, but it is more than obvious that this isn’t the case. This move by the MBTA is nothing short of using the courts to protect their revenue stream. Rather than working with the students and make their fare cards better and more secure, they intimidate them with threats of the FBI and use the power of the courts to muzzle them. I would bet that based on past cases like this the MBTA will end up losing their request for an extension of the gag order but then again the courts aren’t always know for their common sense.

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